'Breaking Bad' Soars in Ratings, Social Media

Zombies and meth are doing wonders for AMC’s bottom line.

The cable channel’s The Walking Dead is a ratings powerhouse, and now the final installments of the critically hailed Breaking Bad are drawing a sizable crowd.

Breaking Bad, which stars Bryan Cranston as a cancer-stricken meth dealer, is experiencing a ratings boost during its final season.

The AMC drama hit series highs on Sunday night, swelling to 6.4 million viewers after the previous week’s cliffhanger….”Ozymandias,” dubbed the best episode in the series’ history by The Hollywood Reporter TV critic Tim Goodman, was up 102 percent from the comparable showing last year — and bested the previous record, set by the recent return, by half a million viewers.

The show is scoring big on social media sites like Twitter, a perfect forum for fans to weigh in on the show’s dramatic developments.

AMC also cites SocialGuide’s Twitter findings from Sunday night, noting the series generated 604,765 mentions — with a peak of 16,329 tweets per minute during the episode’s final 10 minutes.

Breaking Bad is clearly benefiting from “binge viewing,” the ability to watch several past episodes back to back via services like Comcast on Demand and Netflix. The show’s serialized format is ideal for that brand of viewing.